and print it with "lpr tmp.ps" the printed text is very poor quality.
Printing from other programs works fine (e.g. Mozilla, Abiword (although
in the case of Abiword the *screen* fonts look bad but it prints ok)).
Any ideas?
I think I've got an old postscript printer out in the garage. Maybe I
should try that. Using cups and my non-postscript printer is sure slow.

Bill,

I have a similar setup here...CUPS, Debian testing/unstable, + a HP 960
printer (non-postscript). My screen and printing "helvetica" fonts are
acceptable to me... definately better than "dot-matrix" quality. I
agree, the printing is S L O W, but it seems to work.

As I understand it, the true "helvetica" font is not available on stock
Debian installs due to licensing problems from Adobe and/or Apple. The
way Debian handles this is to substitute another font...in my case it is
the "verdana" fonts from the M$ TrueType" family...I think. This is
done as part of setting up TrueType fonts on the system, and is done in
the /etc/X11/XftConfig file...agian "I think".

I dunno exacty what your problem is. My understanding of fonts and how
they are handled in Debian is poor to start off, and I am getting even
more confused with the introduction of "defoma" and "pango" into the
overall mix that you see in Debian testing/unstable... depending on how
much of "unstable" you have installed. The best I can offer is to run
down the high-points of all I have done here and see if something there
helps.

1. I am using the "gimprint" printer drivers for CUPS. Dunno if this
has any bearing, but the overall quality of ALL the fonts is
significantly better than other packages I have experimented with, IMHO.
The hpijs printer drivers are also very good, but are even slower on
my system.

2. Install TrueType fonts per the KDE "anti-aliasing-howto". On my
sytem this is located in /usr/share/doc/anti-aliasing-howto. The
significant points here are to use the "msttcorefonts" Debian package
from testing to get the fonts on your system, make the changes
recommended in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 (looks like you have done this) and
in /etc/X11/fs/config, and to "upgrade" the /etc/X11/XftConfig file.
The last point is where I got the font substitution statement mentioned
above. It is not there in the default Debian X install. I just "cut &
paste" the sample file in the anti-aliasing-howto dir into
/etc/X11/XftConfig without modification after re-naming the original
XftConfig file to something else.

3. Setup defoma as the font manager. You might have to install the
Debian "x-ttcidfont-conf" package...dunno. I added this package as it
didn't get installed automatically. You have to make a second set of
changes in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and /etc/X11/fs/config here to
accomodate the defoma paths. I see you have already done this, so I
imagine this step is un-necessary.

4. Select defoma to manage your fonts.

I also had to re-boot to get all these changes to "take". You could
probably get by with just re-starting X...dunno since I haven't done it
yet.

It looks like you have done a large part of this already. Maybe you can
use it as sort of a "check list" and add those things you haven't done.
I would be happy to share any specific config files you may want to see.

One final "caveat"... I am not a font purist! What looks horribe to you
may look OK to me. An example of what you are seeing would be helpful,
if you can get it... a scan perhaps?